Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert.
– Donna Haraway
Replicants are like any other machine. They can be a
benefit or a hazard.
– Deckard in Blade Runner.
[1] Arguably the most influential Science Fiction (SF) film of all time, Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1926) is one of those remarkable works that, whatever its precursors, inaugurates an entire genre and nearly exhausts its formal possibilities. One of the most widely known films of the silent era, it has been extensively mined by music videos and is considered a prototype for production designers to emulate. Among Lang's German films it is the only one that continues to fascinate audiences, and–thanks to Giorgio Moroder and Madonna–has become an enduring cult classic of the 80s. Recent studies of SF cinema see it as a landmark film, a technological fantasy that mirrors both our fears and our fascination with technology, anticipating films like Blade Runner, Terminator 2 and others. Even more remarkably, the film thematizes the relationship among female sexuality, male-oriented vision, and film technology. My contention here is that the key to the film's ongoing fascination lies in its mesh of technology and sexuality, its blend of melodrama, social critique and spectacle. In depicting the "creation" of female identity–cinema's first cyborg–carefully formed by patriarchal forces, the film projects femininity as a construct in which technology, as theorized by Donna Haraway, can be seen to play a crucial role. My thesis is that Metropolis is not just a conflation of the gender stereotyping and technophobia circulating through Weimar culture, as the film is often read, but a contradictory exploration of gender roles that recognizes the ambivalence of both technology and femininity, indicating possibilities for both the oppression of women and their liberation. Seen this way, the film provides us with a "cognitive mapping" (Sobchack, 224) of the techno-sexual relationships in the world of its composition, and beyond.
[2] Set in a futuristic dictatorship in which the ruling class lives in decadent luxury above ground while slavelike workers toil in unbearable conditions below, Metropolis tells the melodramatic story of a workers' revolt. Their Luddite rebellion is actually the unanticipated result of plot hatched between the Master of Metropolis, Joh Fredersen, and a mad scientist named Rotwang. The scheme is to undermine the workers' liberation movement and to discredit its leader Maria by infiltrating the workers' ranks with an agent-provocateur, a cyborg-double of Maria. This scheme backfires when the cyborg, acting in defiance of its programming, leads the workers on a rampage to destroy the machines that enslave them. But by destroying the machines, the workers flood their homes and nearly drown their children. Stability is restored at the end of the film after the workers burn the cyborg/witch, and the ruler's son, Freder, assumes the role of mediator between the workers and the ruling class.
[3] The film begins with a montage of the great machines of Metropolis–phallic industrial images of gears, pistons, generators–moving in inexorable rhythms and repetition. These images are followed by sequences that establish economic and technological relationships in clearly delineated spatial terms. Under ground, where the workers toil, we see the dark side of technology. Here, where the sun never shines, workers are reduced to robots, their movements dominated by the mechanical rhythms of machines. We witness a violent explosion in the Machine Room, share in Freder's vision of technology as Moloch devouring its victims, and see workers enslaved by mechanisms that resemble giant ten-hour clocks. This is the instrumental view of technology: human life completely dominated by machines. These powerful images of alienation and fragmentation help to explain why the film is often read as an indictment of the dehumanizing effects of technology.
[4] On the surface of the city, however, in spellbinding images and special effects, the dystopian view of technology is seriously contradicted. We see a thriving metropolis, vast skyscrapers linked by aerial highways, huge stadiums and pleasure gardens, airplanes hovering between huge buildings and lines of cars that flow like streams below. These effusive images impart an excitement and fascination with technology that echo Marinetti's raptures of technological dynamism. Here technology is an empowering tool that benefits human purposes and liberates the inhabitants for sensual pursuits and playful activity.
[5] A number of critics have observed the opposing and incompatible views of technology represented here. Andreas Huyssen has argued that the film takes up the views of two schools of art and literature in Weimar Germany: the older Expressionist school that emphasized the oppressive and destructive nature of technology, and the newly emerging machine culture known as New Objectivity with its confidence in technical progress and social engineering (223). J.P. Telotte has claimed that these incompatible attitudes toward technology are inherent in "the genre's formative ideology (60)." For Telotte the unique vocation of the SF film is precisely to explore the pros and cons of technology, providing us with a "double vision" that allows us to see both the potential benefits of a technological utopia and the dystopian source of its power.
[6] This polarization is then complicated by a third space mapped out in the film, a pre-technological space, situated even deeper underground than the workers' dwellings. Here, in the subterranean catacombs, the working girl Maria preaches to the assembled workers. She urges peace and patience, values reinforced by the neo-Christian symbols that surround her, and prophesies the eventual reconciliation between the masters and the workers. This third space is outside of technological control, a place for dissidents, where ideas of change and resistance foment. A standard feature in such famous dystopian landscapes as Zamyatin's We, Huxley's Brave New World, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and others, this space constitutes an alternative to the dilemma posed by the other two. Roger Dadoun has pointed out that these twisting passageways through dark caverns create a feminized space, a metaphor for the womb (137). In sharp contrast to the upper world of the wealthy elite and the lower world of the downtrodden, both of which are dominated by men, this subterranean region is associated with femininity. Claudia Springer writes: "this feminized space exists far below the surface of the earth because, in psychoanalytic terms, female sexuality has been deeply repressed in the city of Metropolis (154)."
[7] If these three spaces provide us with a kind of "cognitive mapping" of the miseries and privileges associated with technological power and a feminized "utopian" alternative, they also serve to delineate gender roles. The wealthy elite who benefit from Fredersen's rule in the upper world are almost all men. We see them at play in Olympic-type athletic events and at Yoshiwara's brothel where the cyborg-Maria performs her erotic dance. The drone-like workers marching in formation are also all men. In fact, with the exception of Maria, the young woman who flirts with Freder at a fountain early in the film, and the workers' wives who eventually join the revolt, Metropolis is a city of men. The film depicts not only an authoritarian society, ruled by the capitalist controller Fredersen, but also a patriarchal one, a society in which women are excluded from the public arena, invisible in the production and consumption of technological power.
[8] Yet there is one compelling image that links technology and women directly: the female robot who is eventually transformed into a rebellious cyborg. Huyssen has argued that the "machine-woman" in Metropolis is the embodiment of early twentieth century male fear of women and machines, both of which were perceived as threats to patriarchal control. According to Huyssen, technology was not always linked to sexuality in this way; the two were associated in the early nineteenth century, at the time when machines were beginning to be perceived as threatening. It is in modernist texts, Huyssen points out, that women and machines are conflated, equating male fears of powerful technologies with fears of female sexuality (224-226).
[9] Huyssen's real insight into Metropolis comes when he observes that the same duality that characterizes the film's attitude toward technology also characterizes its attitude toward women. He writes that the "otherness" of women is represented in two stereotypical images of femininity–the virgin and the vamp–both of which are male projections and both of which constitute a threat to the male world of high technology, efficiency, and instrumental rationality. The working girl Maria prophesies the reign of the "heart" and is associated with values of nurture, affection, emotion; the robot-vamp is a technological artifact upon which the male view of destructive female sexuality is projected. In Huyssen's reading, fear of the active sexualized woman and fear of technology are linked in the machine-vamp who poses a threat to all men, and ironically, as we shall see, to technology itself. He describes her as "a harbinger of chaos (229)" who seduces the idle rich by her sexual allure and turns the workers into "a raging machine-destroying mob (232)."
[10] But this reading also perpetuates some stereotypes. For instance, Huyssen sees the film as responding almost exclusively to male anxieties and fears, telling the same story of male subjectivity in crisis that Siegfried Kracauer analyzed in his pioneering From Caligari to Hitler (1947). For Kracauer, Weimar cinema reflected a collective vision of male subjectivity in crisis and symbolic defeat, a crisis that culminated in Nazism. Kracauer attributed this crisis to the deterioration of the Oedipal configuration, as represented in the "screening" of fantastic themes–split personalities, terrifying doubles, regression, castration anxieties and so on. Following Kracauer, Huyssen reads the virgin/vamp split in terms of its implied technosexual anxieties, its misogynist and technophobic messages. But this split may also yield a more ambivalent message. For one thing, technology does not threaten all men in Metropolis, or indeed all women, at least not in the same way. The idle rich clearly benefit from it before the workers' revolt. And while the voluptuous machine-woman may well be a fetishized fantasy for the men of the upper world, who lust after her body and compete for her sexually with fist-fights and duels, for the workers she is not a sex object at all, but a means for rebellion against intolerable exploitation. Although the machine-woman is a product of male industrial technology and male sexual fantasies, her actions indicate that she is also much more as she defies her male programming and changes from robot passivity to active cyborg aggression. Acting independently, she transgresses the boundaries that separate masters and slaves, capitalists and workers–boundaries on which patriarchal rule in Metropolis depends. Seen this way, she is considerably more than a "harbinger of chaos;" she becomes a figure for the possibility for radical social change.
[11] But why is this technological double created in the first place and, more importantly, why is she embodied as female? When Rotwang first unveils his mechanical creation to Fredersen he describes it as "a machine in the image of man that never tires or makes a mistake." He offers it to Fredersen as a prototype of "the workers of the future." "Now," he says, "we have no further use for living workers." As a new mechanical worker, the robot is the ultimate docile slave that does not rebel, does not protest, does not eat or sleep or require wages. But there is another reason for the robot's construction, made more explicit in the 1984 Moroder version of the film and in Thea von Harbou's script. Here we learn that the robot is intended to recreate Rotwang's ideal woman, Hel, whom he lost to Joh Fredersen in marriage and who died giving birth to Freder. The construction of the artificial woman, then, also represents the ultimate male fantasy of technological creation, "creation without the mother," as Huyssen puts it. Though Rotwang's intentions for his creation are somewhat obscure, we know what Fredersen has in mind: he recognizes in the robot a tool and potential counterforce to Maria, a means to destroy her influence and power over the workers.
[12] Surrounded by children and neo-Christian symbols, the working girl Maria represents one type of idealized woman–virgin, Madonna, angel. Her sphere of influence, as we have seen, is in the subterranean feminized space where she preaches love and reconciliation. Joh Fredersen's sphere of influence, by contrast, is the control room where he is surrounded by emblems of technological power: we see him at a large control panel, in front of video screens, studying blueprints, giving orders to obsequious functionaries. His absolute power is made evident when he casually dismisses Josephat, his long-time secretary, for failing to decipher the cryptic notes found among the workers. Josephat is so distraught by this he attempts suicide. Although Fredersen seems to control everything that happens in the upper and lower worlds of Metropolis, the mysterious notes that circulate among the workers indicate that there are things beyond his control.
[13] Maria's threat to male dominance in Metropolis is made apparent in the sequence in which Rotwang and Fredersen secretly observe her preaching to the workers. The two watch as Maria recounts the legend of the Tower of Babel to the workers. Her version of the tale emphasizes the alienation and fragmentation between the ruling classes and the workers, a situation that obviously parallels conditions in Metropolis. Maria prophesies eventual reconciliation and social harmony: "Between the brain that plans and the hands that build," she says, "there must be a mediator. It is the heart that must bring about an understanding between them." What is puzzling at first is that Fredersen is not utterly delighted with this message since the effect of Maria's preaching is to contain the workers, maintaining the status quo by keeping the boundaries between labor and capital intact. Instead, Fredersen appears disturbed and with a stern face orders Rotwang to remake the robot in Maria's likeness. Clenching his fist proclaims: "Hide the girl in your house. I will send the robot down to the workers to sow discord among them and destroy their confidence in Maria." Politically his reaction makes little sense since Maria is preaching patience and passivity. But from Fredersen's perspective Maria represents a potential rival to his power, a threat to male domination. He fears the subversive effects of the values Maria represents–nurture, compassion, feeling–values generally associated with femininity. And Fredersen has reason enough to fear Maria, since she has already alienated his son from him, leading him to question his father's regime. The human Maria, then, is not just a male projection of the innocent virgin–the girl men like to bring home to meet mom–but also represents a potential threat to male power, should the feminine values of the "heart" ever become dominant.
[14] Similarly, the cyborg-Maria is not just the embodiment of the voluptuous vamp who leads men astray, but becomes a potent and disruptive social force, a machine-woman who nearly tears down the barriers that constrain social possibilities in Metropolis. Her construction as machine-woman, a subversive cyborg, is shown in three distinct stages: we first see her as an obedient machine, then we watch her fusion with the Maria, transforming her into a cyborg. The third stage shows her social and cinematic construction as a sexually alluring and dangerous femme fatale.
[15] When Rotwang first introduces his robot to Fredersen she is little more than a mechanical toy. Made of shiny metal, she is essentially an industrial robot, a docile and obedient machine. We see her obeying Rotwang's wishes, following his instructions. But we have reason to suspect total male control when we learn that Rotwang has lost a hand in the construction of the machine, indicating the threat of the feminine as castratory. Though she bears feminine features, she is at this point asexual. As a metallic robot, she inspires the kind of awe and fear evoked by industrial machinery. This is reinforced when she extends her metallic hand to Fredersen and we see him recoil in fear and horror.
[16] The second stage depicts her transformation from robot to a female-cyborg. In this sequence–elaborately staged as a chemical and electrical fusion in Rotwang's laboratory–Maria's human features merge with the hard metallic body of the robot. As the Maria falls into unconsciousness, the robot comes to life: we see her heart beating, arteries, skin, hair, eyes sparkling. This fusion of the human with the technological makes her, in Donna Haraway's definition, a cyborg. She is replicated, not born, the result of a woman-to-woman transfer. If robots are completely mechanical figures, and androids are genetically engineered organic entities containing no non-biological components, then cyborgs may be identified by the fusion of human beings with technology, "a hybrid of machine and organism (149)," as Haraway puts it. Though it may seem anachronistic to apply this term "cyborg" to a film made in 1926 (the cyborg is, after all, a recent cybernetic organism, a consequence of the second industrial revolution in which machines replace brains rather than hands) the film clearly shows the fusion of machine and organic components.